I’m Baaaaaack!

It took me a few days to recover from those horrible pre-spring break midterms my professors cooked up for us (I love my professors, really, I just wish there weren’t so many tests in one week). But, I’m rested and raring to go. So, a quick wrap up of the news I’ve missed:

Fuck Libertarians: No particular reason, I’ve just been really annoyed by people screaming “property rights” lately. Sorry, but my right to health care trumps your right to own obscene amounts of wealth.

Europe Needs to Stop Being Idiotic Bigots: A German judge ruled recently that a woman could not get an expedited divorce from her abusive husband because she’s from Morocco, where wife beating is part of their culture. This is wrong on so many levels I don’t know where to begin. Oh wait, yes I do: Wife beating is grounds for divorce in Morocco and under most schools of Islamic jurisprudence. And Muhammad railed against domestic abuse. And there are Hadith (traditions relating to Muhammad) saying that the worst beating a man can administer to his wife is a tap. And this judge is not an expert in Islamic law. And… I think you get the picture.

Fire the Science Writers:Feministbloggers are up in arms about a study that says that industrialized countries that score highest on gender equality measures have poorer health overall. There’s reason to be upset, but not at the study (whether or not the study is scientifically good or not is another matter that I’m not qualified for). The study itself is thoroughly boring, and tentative, and all that stuff you look for in a good sociology paper. The newspaper article, not so much. It’s a bunch of anti-feminist, scientifically-illiterate claptrap. Aside from it’s pseudoscientific use of “correlated with” and “associated with” to mean “causes,” it ignores the scientists’ hypothesis until one sentence at the end: “Another suggestion was that gender equality has not yet been fully achieved, and that the effects being seen are just transitional.” In other words, the problem is not that there’s too much equality, but that there’s not enough. I swear, this “science writer” wouldn’t know an test tube from a Bunsen burner.

Liberals Can Stop Being Islamophobes Now: After news came out that two Sudanese women were sentenced to death by stoning for adultery, the Blogosphere (actually, mostly just Feministe and Eteraz.org) rose up. Kudos for that. Anti-kudos (oduks?) for using this as an excuse to bash Islam or justify the war in Afghanistan. Even more anti-kudos for saying that people (like me) that were trying to preempt Islamophobia by pointing out that Islam is more progressive than Christianity or Judaism are trying to distract them from the main issue. Sorry, but otherization is the main issue. The reason so many men feel comfortable with laws that treat women as second class citizens is that they believe they are another being, another species. The reason we feel comfortable invading countries is because we turn them into caricatures, assuaging our guilt. Moreover, it is this argument (save the poor little brown women from the big scary brown men) that has justified colonialism (and modern wars) and made life many times worse for the same women we claim to care so much about.

It’s Spring, and Impeachments are in the Air: Okay, so that’s a really corny headline. The point is that we may finally see some action on the impeachment of the morons, criminals, dicks, and jackasses that currently inhabit the White House. I just don’t understand why we can’t impeach Bush under the Nuremburg Tribunal: “planning, preparation, initiation or waging of a war of aggression or a war in violation of international treaties, agreements or assurances” is a crime against peace, and one of the charges for which Nazis were hanged. I mean, being stripped of his pension is not exactly hanging, but it’s a start.

Go Barb: If you haven’t seen the exchange between Al Gore, James “Insecure About Something” Inhofe, and Barbara Boxer, here it is: